Efficient collection and handling of soiled and contaminated linen and other laundry has been a continuing challenge to hospitals. The challenge applies to all phases of laundry handling, including its removal from the patient environment.
Prior to the present invention, a common--and perhaps the most common--technique for removing soiled and contaminated launderable material from patient care areas involved rolling hamper stands. Such stands, widely believed to represent the most convenient and cost-effective collection arrangement, typically comprise casters supporting a scissors type frame with a pair of pivotally interconnected inverted U-shaped frame members with laundry bag supporting means, such as a platform, secured adjacent the base of the frame. A laundry bag is removably attached at the top of the frame and hangs down between the frame members with the bottom of the bag resting on the platform or other supporting means.
In the past such hamper stands were wheeled from room to room, with the bag supported in an open-mouth condition. At each stop various kinds and amounts of soiled objects were dropped through the open bag mouth. After a number of stops, when the bag was full, it would be closed and sent on its way to the laundry by a number of alternative means, including carts, chutes, pneumatic transmission tubes and so forth.
Observers have recognized a need for closure of laundry bags. Examples may be found for instance in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,379,367; 3,633,932 and 3,893,648. More recently, the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Hospitals amended its Accreditation Manual for Hospitals to require that soiled linen must be collected in impervious bags or containers that are properly closed at the site of collection. An official of the Commission has been quoted as interpreting the above requirement to mean that "properly closed" refers to a closing procedure that minimizes the discharge of contaminated air from within the bag into the patients' environment. The "site of collection" was said to mean at the bedside of the patient.
Faced with the problem of conforming to the new requirements, hospital operators proposed various solutions. These included among others: detaching the top of the bag from the top of the stand, closing it at the bedside in each room and then re-opening and re-adjusting it on the stand upon entering the next room; replacing conventional hamper stands with a "step-on" lid opening hamper; use of a "shower cap" type of cover made of fabric to put over the top of the hamper; use of a handle-and-hanger equipped lid, free of attachment to the stand or bag, analagous to a garbage can lid; use of plastic film laundry bags with twist type closures; the "Sak-Rak".TM. (Principle Business Enterprises, Inc., Dunbridge, Ohio) system; and a variety of other bag-closing and lid arrangements.
The present invention involves the discovery that the nuisance, inefficiency, expense and potential for contamination involved in some prior methods can be reduced or eliminated.